Sack Lunch
by mercurybard
Summary: Postseason 1 AU. Sara meets Michael in the mountains to settle what was left unresolved between them when he broke out. SaraMichael.


Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_. I mean no offense by this—I'm just writing to amuse myself and a few friends.

Author's Note: This is. All. Pamala's. Fault. She issued the challenge, and I stupidly agreed to take prompt #3: Michael nervous. This belongs in an AU starting after the end of Season 1.

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Sara sat on the edge of the bed and fought the urge to shiver. This was the last available double left in the no-name Appalachian motel and was a smoking room. Someone had snuck in before she'd come up from registering and opened a window to try and drive out the fumes, but the acrid smoke from past customers still stung her eyes. All the open window had done was put the room temperature at something like forty degrees.

The curtains—stiff as cardboard—wouldn't shut all the way, and a sickly yellow line of light from the streetlamp in the parking lot cut across the foot of the bed. Every couple of minutes, lightning from a bizarre winter storm cut across the sky, bleaching the room with its blue-white light.

Sara looked down at her watch. 9:46. He should have been here over thirty minutes ago. Her thoughts started to drift towards ice on the highway and his car smashed against a guardrail, but she gritted her teeth and firmly yanked it back. It was Michael. If he thought he was being followed, he would go half an hour out of his way to lose whoever was on his tail.

Then another thought hit her—he'd been paranoid enough about setting up this meeting since it meant he would have to come out of whatever hidey-hole he'd tucked himself into and risk being seen in public. Risk being seen by someone who watched _America's Most Wanted_ or who read the papers and knew about the Fox River Eight. Maybe he'd decided it wasn't worth the risk.

Fishing her cell phone out of her purse, she checked to see if she'd somehow missed a call, sitting here in the completely silent room. No, but the phone wasn't getting any reception up this high in the mountains. She dropped the phone back into the purse and flopped back on the bed.

The Plan (for Michael apparently couldn't do anything without first planning the hell out of it) was for her to get a room at this hotel, on this certain evening. He was supposed to call her and find out the room number. Thanks to the cell phone company's spotty coverage, he had probably been wandering around the building for the past thirty-six…no, thirty-seven minutes. Or given up and gone home.

Damn it.

It had been months since he'd broken himself, his brother, and a very motley crew of inmates out of Fox River Prison. Since she'd let him break them out. Since she'd overdosed on morphine in an attempt to escape the consequences of leaving that door unlocked. In the first weeks following the breakout, she'd told herself over and over again that she never wanted to lay eyes on Michael Scofield. He did things to her that just didn't make sense, and that was terrifying. But then, after she had time to think (and if there was one thing rehab did, it was give you plenty of time to think), she'd realized that she did need to see him, just one last time. Hence this meeting.

There was a soft tap at the door that made Sara jump nearly out of her skin.

_Please let that be him_, she prayed as she padded over to the door. She hadn't thought to take off her slush-covered boots until she'd already sat down on the bed, and her journey there had left a track of water across the carpet. It soaked into her socks now, as she squinted through the peephole in the thick motel door.

He was bundled up in a green jacket that looked like Army surplus and had a ski cap pulled down low over his eyes, but there was no mistaking Michael Scofield. He stood very still, but it was the stillness of a gazelle ready to spring away at the first sign of a lion. Funny, how she'd managed to see him as a predator, preying on her back at Fox River.

She opened the door for him. "Sorry about that—my phone's not getting any reception out here. I hope it didn't take you too long to find the room."

Michael stepped past her, handed her the two paper bags he held, and scanned the room with steely eyes. As she closed and latched the door, he moved to the bathroom and glanced inside, briefly flicking on the light. "What?" she snapped, a little annoyed at the invasion of supposed-privacy…even though this wasn't her room any more than it was his. Even though she'd gotten this room for the both of them. "Did you think there'd be an FBI agent hiding behind the shower curtain?"

"It's a possibility," he said as he opened the little closet and inspected its shallow depths. "I wouldn't blame you if there was. I didn't exactly treat you right the last time we saw one another."

"The last time we saw one another, you were begging me to help you save your brother's life."

"And you accused me of using you to steal drugs or needles." Inspection complete, he pulled his hat off, twisting it between his long-fingered hands. Despite the storm, he was without gloves. "I asked too much of you—if I had known about…"

_If he had known about her drug problem, he would have never asked her_. That's what he was too politic to say. Too polite. Michael was always so painfully polite to her, even when he was being presumptuous. Back at the prison, there had been times when she wished he was as crude as the other inmates—it would have been easier to reject him then.

"Take off your coat—at least pretend like you're going to stay awhile," she ordered, looking down at her wet socks. Her toes had gone numb.

Tossing his hat on top of the mini-fridge, he shrugged out of the jacket and laid that over the hat. Somehow, his jeans, ratty tennis shoes, and gray thermal shirt didn't match the image of civilian Michael that she'd carried in her head for the previous months. He'd been an engineer at a prestigious firm, a professional. Now, he looked blue-collar…one step up from hobo even. Life on the run hadn't been easy on him, and Sara wondered how many close brushes there'd been.

Her eyes moved over him, taking in the all-too familiar planes of his face, the dark brown curls that now covered the top of his head without hiding his widow's peek. The shirt covered all but a tiny wedge of the tattoo, near his throat where the first of three buttons had been left undone. What was there? She'd seen him several times without his shirt on in the clinic and had even looked at the Polaroids taken of the tattoo by the prison staff. There was an angel with a sword, she reminded herself, about to drive the point into the back of another's angel neck. Or maybe the first angel wasn't an angel at all, but a demon. That would make more sense.

Michael wouldn't meet her eyes. He kept looking over her shoulder as if focused on some point right behind her and an eternity away. "I brought you dinner. Nothing fancy—just sandwiches and pop."

Oh, the bags. Sara moved back to her perch on the bed and opened one of the brown paper sacks. "Peanut butter and jelly—my favorite." She pulled the sandwich out and began to unwrap the plastic. Actually, it wasn't, but as sack lunch fare went, it wasn't bad. She took a big bite just to show him that she appreciated the gesture and then set the food aside.

Michael had settled—finally—on the other side of her bed and removed a Pepsi from the second bag. He didn't open it, just held it in his hand, tapping the top with the tips of his fingers. "My nephew eats about six a day as snacks."

"Lincoln has a son?" Somehow, she hadn't known. She threw her mind back to Burrows' aborted execution. There'd been a small, dark-haired woman who Sara had assumed was Lincoln's lawyer but had looked rather distraught. A girlfriend, maybe, or an ex-wife?

"LJ. He's sixteen and trying to eat me out of house and home."

The tapping thing was starting to get on her nerves. "Does that actually work?"

"What?"

"Tapping on the top of the can—does it actually prevent it from fizzing over?"

Michael looked down at the can in surprise. "I didn't even realize I was doing it."

She drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest. "Has it been that bad for you out on the road?" This was definitely not the Michael Scofield she remembered. He was fraying badly around the edges, about to unravel and that scared her. He'd been so in-control back at Fox River.

"Yes. No. I don't know." He tossed the can back into the bag, unopened. "Why'd you want to see me? If you want an apology, you can have one—not a very pretty one because I just can't seem to find the right words to say to you no matter how I try. I spent all of last night in front of the bathroom mirror thinking of how unfair of me it was to ask you to break the law. You lost your job because of mistakes I'd made in my plans to break Lincoln out. You nearly lost your life, and it's because of me."

Lightning flickered behind him, and a sudden gust of wind rattled the window. Impulsively, Sara crawled across the bed to him (putting her knee square in the sandwich, but she pretended not to notice) and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. Why, she couldn't quite explain to herself, except that he looked like a person in dire need of a hug. She wasn't a particularly huggy person, but after months in rehab and therapy, she'd come to understand there were times when people just needed to be held.

He stiffened immediately and tried to jerk away. Since he'd been perched on the very edge of the mattress, the movement sent them both tumbling to the floor. Michael swore as he cracked his head against the bottom of the other bed. Sara landed on her side, one knee twisted painfully under her.

She giggled.

For a moment, he looked at her like she'd lost her mind, and then he too started to chuckle. Quietly at first, but then it grew into deep belly laughs that had him clutching his sides. "I…I came here expecting you to tell me to go to hell," he explained once he'd gotten some control back.

"I think I had something like that in mind originally," she confessed, rolling over on her back so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, staring up at the ceiling. "At least, that was one of several potential plans. You're not the only one who can plan, you know." Sara suddenly felt light inside, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her. Relief, that was it—she felt relief. She'd put her knee in PB & J and knocked them both on their asses, but she didn't feel (too) embarrassed. And when he looked at her, it wasn't with the pity or scorn she'd been seeing in everyone else's eyes since she'd woken up in the hospital with a tube down her throat.

"What were the others?"

"We could have an awkward conversation and then leave and go our separate ways and never see one another again." Even as she said it, Sara knew that wasn't her Plan A. Or even Plan B.

"That's one," Michael said quietly, folding his hands over his stomach and looking over at her.

Her eyes met his, and she smiled. "I waited for you."

"I know, and I…"

Sara reached over and pressed a finger to his lips. She meant it as a gesture for him to shut-up, but he just kept talking around it. When Scofield talked, he had all the power. At least, that's how it had always seemed. Now, she was wondering if he took control of their conversations to hide his nervousness as much as to manipulate her. For the first time, it occurred to her that Michael Scofield might actually be shy. And, if that was the case, then she was going to have to take control of the situation; otherwise, they would be parting after just a brief sack lunch of peanut butter and grape jelly.

"This isn't going the way I planned," he continued to babble, "God, nothing's gone the way I planned."

"Michael."

He let his hands drop. "Yes?"

"Shut-up," she ordered as she rolled on top of him.


End file.
